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May 26, 2010

Pastor David Platt tells of a time when he visited a secret gathering of Christians in an undisclosed location in Asia. He describes the scene in this way: "Twenty leaders from different churches in the area sat on the floor with their Bibles open. They had gathered in secret and intentionally had arrived at different times to not draw attention to their meeting. They lived in a country in Asia where it is illegal for them to gather like this. If caught, they could lose their land, their jobs, their families or their lives.

'Some of the people in my church have been pulled away by a cult,' said one man sitting in a corner. The cult he referred to is known for kidnapping and torturing believers. Brothers and sisters having their tongues cut out of their mouths is not uncommon. As he shared about the dangers his church members were facing, tears welled up in his eyes. 'I am hurting,' he said, 'and I need God's grace to lead my church through these attacks.'

A woman on the other side of the room spoke up next: 'Some of the members in my church were recently confronted by government officials. They threatened their families, saying tht if they did not stop gathering to study the Bible, they were going to lose everything they had.' She asked for prayer, saying, 'I need to know how to lead my church to follow Christ even when it costs them everything.'

As I looked around the room, I saw that everyone was now in tears. The struggles expressed by this brother and sister weren't isolated.

They went to their knees, and with their faces on the ground began to cry out to God not with grandiose theological language but with heartfelt praise and pleading. 'O God, thank You for loving us.' "O God, we need you.' 'Jesus, we give our lives to You and for You.'  'Jesus, we trust in You.'

They audibly wept before God as one leader after another prayed. After an hour, the room drew to a silence, and they rose from the floor, leaving puddles of tears in a circle around the room.

Three weeks after my third trip to underground house churches in Asia, I began my first Sunday as the pastor of a megachurch in America. The scene was much different. Dimly lit rooms were now replaced by an auditorium with theatre-style lights. Instead of traveling for miles by foot or bike to gather for worship, we'd arrived in millions of dollars' worth of vehicles. Dressed in our fine clothes, we sat down in our customed chairs.

Please don't misunderstand this scene. It was filled with wonderful Christians who wanted to welcome me and enjoy one another. People like you and me, who simply desire community, who want to be involved in church and who believe God is important in their lives. But as a new pastor comparing the images around me that day with the pictures still fresh in my mind of brothers and sisters on the other side of the world, I couldn't help but think that somewhere along the way we'd missed what is radical about our faith and replaced it  with what is comfortable. We were settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves."

As I read this article from Charisma Magazine, I echoed this pastor's questions. I long to see myself and the church become "radical" in its faith and commitment to Jesus. My prayer is that God will show me how to lead our church into a deeper commitment to Christ and His Kingdom.

Fr. Roger

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You shall be filled PDF Print E-mail

May, 2010

"Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit." (Acts 1:4).

Jesus  said in John 14:15 , "If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever - the spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you."

Jesus was preparing them for his eventual death on the cross and his ascension into heaven. He promised to be with them until the end of the ages. He would be with them via his Holy Spirit which he would put inside of them. The Holy Spirit would mingle with their human spirits and would testify to them that they were children of God (Romans 8:16). He would also begin to transform their human spirits and make them more like his own spirit by developing the fruit of the Spirit in them (Gal. 5:22). That fruit would be an indication of the restoration of the image of God with which humans were oriiginally created. Jesus imparted the Holy Spirit to his disciples after his resurrection. In John 20:22 we read that Jesus "breathed on them and said,  "Receive the Holy Spirit." Just as God breathed into Adam the physical breath of life and Adam was born a human being ((Gen.1:7), so now, Jesus (being God) breathed into his disciples the spiritual breath of life and they became born again human beings.

It was after that (right before Jesus' ascension into heaven) that Jesus told them to wait in Jerusalem until they had been clothed with power from on high (Luke 24:48). After Jesus' ascension the disciples went back to Jerusalem and went to what was probably the scene of the Last Supper, the upper room. They were waiting for the promise of the Father to be given to them. That promise is mentioned in each of the gospels in one form or another. John the Baptist said, "I baptize you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire" (Luke 3:16).

Acts 1:5 equates that saying with what was about to happen on the Day of Pentecost when all of the disciples were filled or baptized with the Holy Spirit. On the Day of Pentecost, Peter recognized that this was the power, the infilling, the promise that Jesus had told them about. He also recognized it as the fulfillment of Joel 2.

What turned the disciples (who had the Holy Spirit) from fearful disciples behind locked doors into lions of the faith willing to die for the Lord they knew and experienced? The answer -  They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and with power.

The power they received was the power to live the Christian life, the power to be witnesses (Acts 1:8), the power to heal, the power to cast out evil spiirits, the power to exercise the gifts of the Spirit. What do we see them doing after they were filled with the Spirit? They witnessed, they healed, they cast out demons, the spoke in tongues (in a private prayer language as well as in public worship), they exercised various gifts of the Spirit.

That Baptism in or with the Holy Spirit (including everything that goes along with that infilling) is still available today. Jesus said, "If you fathers who are evil  know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?" (Luke 11:13).

I heard one priest say, "Ask the Lord Jesus to fill you with his Holy Spirit. Then begin to praise him, but not in English." This priest was testifying to an experience that he had in which he found a new way to praise God (Acts2:11). That opened the door for him to experience the power of the Spirit in a truly transformative way. You can read his story in his autobiography Nine O'Clock in the Morning. His name - Dennis Bennett.

One need not be afraid of the Holy Spirit. He only wants what is best for us. He wants us to succeed as Christians. He wants us to experience a closeness to Jesus that we could not experience on our own. He wants to pour the love of God into our hearts (Romans 5:5).

Would you ask Jesus to baptize or fill you with his Holy Spirit today? Then believe that he has done it and begin to thank him for it. The first time you are filled with the Spirit quite often is an amazing experience that is sometimes hard to describe to others, but when it happens to you, you will know it. We are not just filled once, but we are to be constantly filled with the Holy Spirit. Most of those infillings are not the same sort as our first infilling. Subsequent infillings may not even be noticed. But the promise remains that we will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on us. Power to be better Christians, to do greater works, to minister to others in Jesus' name, and to be his witnesses in our world.

Fr. Roger Grist

 

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The challenge of faitfhfulness PDF Print E-mail

April 15,2010

This is Tax Day, a day in which all wage earners are to have their federal taxes filed to the Treasury department. We do that not necessarily because we have faith in the federal government to use our tax money wisely, or because we want to show how much we love our government and want to be good citizens of this country. For most, it is because we don't want to incur a penalty or jail time.

I wonder if we don't look at serving the Lord and the Church in the same way. We often don't think about our commitments to God and his Church as being because we want to show our love for him and we want to be good "citizens" of the Church. It might be that one thinks of serving God as a necessary thing to be done to avoid the consequences in the end.

May I suggest that one of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22) that is sadly missing in churches these days is the fruit of faithfulness. Many seem not to care if they make a commitment to God or to his Church and then renege on it. I can understand unbelievers doing that. We had a number of unbelievers say they were coming to our Alpha Course and then did not show up on the first night.

How often do we see commitments made to serve on committees, to attend events, to help out with a project at the church only to find that "something has come up." i realize there are emergencies that might prevent us from fulfilling our commitments. Sometimes our jobs demand more of our time that we expected. But by and large it is tempting to go back on our commitments when something comes along that we want to do more.

I have heard parents say "My son has a baseball game that day, so i can't come to a certain church event." If something else came up that they might want to do, I can almost guarantee that they would faithfully keep their commitment to the baseball game. Somehow, church events don't seem to have the same priority  as do other events.  Rather then looking for ways to get involved in ministries, attend events, help with projects, we don't view those things as something to which we automatically want to commit. If we don't have anything else to do , then maybe, but there are so many things to do.

This idea of challenge of faithfulness can carry over to our ministries as well. When we schedule events do we think about how those events might affect our church ministry. When we sign up to serve as a lector or usher, for example, how high of a priority is that ministry? Is it high enough to warrant us saying no to anything else that might come up?

Could it be that we show our love for God by the way we serve him and the commitment we have to our service of him? Could it be that we show our fellow Christians how much we love them by our faithfulness to our commitments to the Body of Christ- the Church?

If faithfulness is a fruit of the Spirit, then would you make your prayer to God asking that he develop faithfulness in you towards him and his Church? Ultimately, when we are excited about Jesus and His Church , it is much easier to be faithful to our commitments to both. May this be our prayer this day, "Lord, would you fill me with your Spirit so that I may keep the commitments I make to you and your Church? Would you develop within me the fruit of faithfulness?"

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